It's Coming On Christmas
by Wijida
Summary: (G/C). Catherine's point of view, mostly... Her life, her loves, her yearning for independence...and Christmas.


Disclaimer: CSI belongs to Jerry Bruckheimer, and CBS.

It's Coming On Christmas… 

By Manda

                She wanted her independence this year…to dream of Christmas in Montana, a tree towering overhead, angel on top barely brushing the sparkling, cottage-cheese ceiling. Her mother had once told her of an apartment…her dream apartment in New York, when she had been young. Smooth white walls, as white as the snow that fell for every winter day of her childhood on the ranch.  Oak baseboards polished to a fine sheen and soft enough to buffet any children she would have in the future.

                And then came her husband, and soon after, Catherine…and the dream of an apartment in the city, with wide windows overlooking Central Park…had faded as quickly as the snow in the springtime.

                But the dream couldn't fade so quickly in Catherine's mind, although the obstacles that had overcome it had been almost enough to steer away from it.

                _I danced when I was seventeen_.

                Before I was seventeen, more or less, when I found my way into a small, dingy, smoke-filled room below an apartment building on the outer limits of Vegas. My first boyfriend had left me, and when I'd gone home…there hadn't been anything left to go to. I wish that I hadn't left at all…I missed my mother so, at times. It was harder than I'd thought to leave, after seeing them again. The house they'd bought was small, and comfortable…nearly the type for a picket fence, if it hadn't been nestled in the middle of suburbia, California. Sunshine was wonderful, but the chill from my family somehow made it less than welcoming.  When I walked into the smoky interior of the _Pole Vault_, my senses were assaulted by the smells of cigarette smoke and stale beer, and although I was adept at preventing myself from gagging…I admitted, later, that I was indeed repulsed.

                And they hired me. Not on my looks alone, as the owner hoarsely insisted…but my talent that was so apparent in the way my hips swayed…the way my hair, then long and blond, bounced with the momentum of my stride. The bedspring curls, so much, indeed, like my bedsprings, when I'd lived and loved with Ricky. And I took the job offer, knowing that I would make more in an hour than I could ever hope to make in the cafeteria at LVU[VGC1] . Wearing a hairnet was never really my style, anyway, although I wasn't certain that a lavender bikini bottom and oil glistening on my skin was a pleasing alternative.

                But I wore it with style, as many men said when we entered the back room for me to give them their money's worth night after night. Some nights I didn't, some nights I did…it all depended on the circumstances, and the man. Francesco, the owner of the club, never told me I had much of a choice, but he kept me on when things got rough financially, and I never complained. Because of Francesco, I never had to quit school, although the times got rough and the money became less enjoyable, by the way I earned it.

                _I fell in love in two years time…_.

                College was almost over…I'd made it to my fourth year of a science major and was on my way out with an LVU sweatshirt and matching tote in the school colors. My newest love, my life and my happiness was Edward Willows, a year my senior and with more aspirations than I imagined I would have at that age. He had a band that played at some of the nearby clubs, like the _Astra Luna_ and the _Redi Wip_, and upon meeting me he had chosen a name for the group of five slightly baked, yet hot and steamy men. All bouncers, other than Eddie, the name _Saliva Savers_ wasn't exactly what I'd have called glamourous…but if Eddie was happy, then so was I.

                My dream had been to wear an Armani. A silk dress that clung to my thighs and traced my figure with elegance and style. The neckline would droop to show my freckled cleavage, and I'd wear the necklace my mother had given me when I had turned sixteen. It was the only thing I had that I cared about, when I left home. I'd wear silver sandals that caressed my feet like a gentle massage, and when I had my hair and makeup done, I'd have my toes painted the softest sky blue there was. Something that matched my eyes, and the sky on a warm summer day, when Mom would bake apple pie and I'd run to the window to have my piece before my brothers and sisters could get theirs. It was harder to have your pie and eat it, too, when you were among seven children, and living on a ranch where you were taught to make your own way.

                The wedding dress Eddie paid for reminded me of apple pie and my mother…in the way the crimson fabric was crisp like the piecrust, and the shade of my mother's hair.  It was uncomfortable, scraping across my skin and baring my shoulders to the heat and the sun of Nevada. We were married before an audience of my closest friends and his…a motley crew of strippers and drunkards, dressed in their Sunday finest. Which, for my friends, was simply wearing clothing that didn't bare their midsections.

                And our honeymoon was in Vegas.  So many couples around the world love the idea of Vegas…the glamour, the glitz and the underground clubs. But we lived there, breathed the polluted air and basked in the florescent glow of multicolored lights. We ate at the Hard Rock Café, we walked the sidewalks and shopped in the darkest corners…the places tourists never really saw. Eddie needed his cocaine, and I let him have it, didn't put my foot down in its ten-inch heel to tell him I didn't agree with his way of doing things.  I didn't want the habit; I didn't want the puffy eyes and the addiction that never stopped me from craving more. I didn't want those things, and I didn't want the way things were after that…when I was throwing up every morning and couldn't go to work on most nights. 

                Francesco threatened to fire me, again, and I resisted the urge to vomit on his shining, patent leather shoes. Cheap imitation penny loafers that I'd almost bought for Eddie, once…but when I became sober, I realized that my husband was too good for penny loafers. So I bought him a pair of bedroom slippers, with grey silk lining snuggled within the softness of a velvet navy blue sea. Water and a storm, like the sea in Moby Dick, the book I first picked up when I decided our baby needed to have an education better than I could ever afford.  She needed to be brave, and bold, and knowledable beyond all that Eddie and I knew, combined. 

                _By any other name…_

                There's nothing I wanted more than to name my child after someone who meant a great deal to me. If it were a boy, I would name him William, after an actor whose performances had given me such hope and joy when I was alone at home. Eddie would go out, make a fool of himself with women…I knew he did that, since so many of those nights included my intense craving for ice cream. I would go to the nearest store, and I always saw him…always…sitting in our car, a silver Honda, making out with a woman whose eyes were set too close together. Too flawed, although my plump face and rounded belly did not arouse my husband the way her imperfect features seemed to. 

                Whenever he went out, whenever I sat at home, I would watch a William Petersen movie, and practice my breathing exercises without breaking a sweat. After that, I always read from my baby names book, seeking out the name of a girl I knew. A girl who spent her days with me…who I felt I knew already, every detail of her life… even though she wasn't yet a part of the world. If it was a girl, with white-gold hair that fell from her shoulders like the mists of Niagra falls…with eyes as blue as the water below them, that captured my reflection and held it there… I would name her Lindsey. Lindsey Willows. It fit, as well as Catherine Willows had…although I hoped her life would be a happier one than mine had been, with that name.

                My name wasn't making me happy anymore. To be a willowy dancer with the name of Willows meant that the next club I sought employment at would find me a novelty. An amazing, stunning vista of style and grace, with hips that swayed as elegantly as those of a Hawaiian hula girl on a dashboard of a moving vehicle. Eddie had bought one, though I refused to allow him to place it in our car.  I wouldn't have Lindsey staring at something that reminded her father of his wife's profession.

                I didn't plan on keeping that profession for very long. And as most of my plans, I expected that, too, to be put on hold for what I knew was not the greater good.

                _To love and to cherish…_

The blue eyes sought me out as I was dancing along the edge of a black, opal stage, grasping a silver pole and sliding my figure down it seductively. Having my baby had allowed me to regain a figure worth looking at…or so I imagined, when I saw the hungry eyes of men who poured into the club every night. It was a new club, a new image for me, with my plum velvet thong and a fluffy feather boa that Lindsey always wanted to play with when I came into the dressing room.  Kicking Eddie out was the best thing I could have ever done, although his wrath would have conquered my dreams by taking away Lindsey. I'm certain of that, if he had known that I kept my daughter in my dressing room at night, when babysitters were hard to find, and my co-workers were more than happy to help out. Marlene was a mother, and Sadie was, too, both of them knowing too well what it's like to survive with no one on your side.

                When he came back to see me, after the show, I was more surprised than alarmed. That a man would come back into the dressing room was usually unheard of…although more so if he came and didn't want a private show. This one came with a silver case in his hand, flashing a badge that identified him as Gil Grissom, CSI Level 3, from the Las Vegas Crime Lab. 

                I found him fastinating, on a professional level.  His profession, not mine. He had a strange outlook on life, speaking as if the dead were more alive than the living.  Although I understood the scientific jargon quite well, I never really had come to appreciate it until Grissom began to show me that you didn't have to be set back by your age and the lack of opportunity. There was no lack of opportunity…merely the obstacles that we allowed in our way.  He was twenty-four, and already working in the crime lab. The youngest person there, or so he boasted. Yet it wasn't boasting, in the way he presented the information, as if giving a report to some stuffed shirt who held his career in their hands. I'd never been looked at with such respect, and even standing there in a silk kimono, the liquid peach fabric drooping off my naked shoulders…Gil Grissom was every inch the gentleman that Eddie never could be.

                And my new career was launched within days; my old one choking and dying in the dust left my Gil Grissom's black company Tahoe, when he picked me up at the steps of my house in Henderson. The house Eddie was too stingy to purchase until later in our marriage…the house I gained custody of when I gained custody of Lindsey.  I had an interview with the head of the criminalistics department, a short and stocky little man whose tie seemed just a tad too gaudy, and whose suit was the shade of tan I had most become accustomed to seeing squashed in the tread of my boot. Sand in Vegas was like water in the Caspian Sea.

                And Jim Brass shook my hand, saying he was impressed by my determination and zest…and I found his warm smile to be a balm on my senses, usually overwhelmed by Eddie's drunken grin. Brass was older, and had been in the field longer than I had been gyrating to bad music over broken speakers…this combination of his fatherly warmth and generosity made me feel as if I had at last come home. I loved my new work, barely into it the first day, and being partnered with Grissom made me comfortable.

                On the twelfth day of Christmas… 

Christmas came again, as it always did, with a rush of holiday shopping and the sound of sleigh bells as Lindsey hung a loop of them over the front doorknob. Our house smelt of gingerbread and cinnamon, as I burnt my favorite candles and let our homemade gingerbread men sit on the kitchen countertop to cool. My daughter spent her time waiting in her room, telling me I couldn't come in, as she was conferring with Santa about my present, and didn't want me to hear her talking to him over her two way radio.

                I was thirty-seven that year, and Lindsey was old enough to hold her own while I cleaned up the kitchen and organized magazines on the coffee table. _Forensics Weekly, Scientists Monthly, _and _Victoria's Secret_, although I shifted the last magazine beneath the pile, discreetly. We were alone, and I took time to stare at the walls of my home…painted eggshell white with glistening oak baseboards. Wonderful, when Lindsey had taken on her 'sliding on the oriental rug' stage, and she continuously slammed her fragile body into the doorways and living room walls. The front hallway was like a Slip N' Slide for her, and I put a stop to that the moment I had the money, buying a rug with a rubber mat underneath, to prevent further injuries to my child and the expensive rugs. Although many were already stained from grape juice and Eddie's cigarettes…so sometimes I wondered why I bothered at all.

                He came at seven, although I hadn't expected him until eight, knowing the tendency he would have to linger at work with his bugs and his larvae. But he came early, and I opened the door to an armful of packages, wrapped hastily in comic strips and leftover field reports…with the Las Vegas Crime Lab logo embossed on the side of each package. Ribbons trailed in brightly colored cascades of fabric to brush at the sleeve of his charcoal grey jacket, and I eased several of the boxes from his arms as he stepped over the threshold, feeling the bright ribbon colors reflecting from my cheeks.

                "Merry Christmas, Grissom."

                "Merry Christmas, Catherine." He shrugged himself out of his jacket and I took it, hanging it in the hall closet beside the gilt edged mirror I'd bought when I'd earned my first paycheck at the _Pole Vault_. It was one of the only reminders I kept of those days…besides the ones firmly entrenched in my memory. And even those were slowly being replaced by the sweeter thoughts…holding my daughter, accepting my promotion to CSI level 3…

                Lindsey came out to see Grissom and open the presents he had brought. Presents I had consented to let her open early, only because she would spend Christmas day with her father, and I wouldn't see the joy on her face.  I knew what he'd done, knew what he'd spent days carefully choosing for my daughter, who I knew he imagined would one day head the lab in our place.

                A beaker, with a small plate on the side, with her name and the date inscribed on it in intricate lettering. A jewlery box made from what I knew damned well had been one of Grissom's ant farms.  And I even let her open one from me…the locket I'd ordered from one of Las Vegas's more posh jewelers.  Grissom helped her put it on, and smiled at me with those depth-of-the-sea eyes as she flung her arms around my neck and squeezed, so tight. 

                "What did you get Mommy?" 

                He didn't have to get me anything, and I'd told him that repeatedly. At work, in the car, at the grocery store, on my cell phone. No matter what, I'd told him to get Lindsey what he wanted to get her, and forget about me. I just wanted her for as long as I could have her, and his company for as long as he was willing. Unless he had a scientific whammy to keep my baby girl from growing up any faster…he would have to settle for making me happy with his company…and maybe a bottle of the finest vodka he could find…for the time when Lindsey went to bed.

                May every deity on earth forgive me for glaring at him the way I did, when he withdrew a box the size of my palm, smoky blue velvet covering every inch of the container. Lindsey ran her fingers over it in awe, and stood aside as Grissom handed it across the living room to me. I sat on the low, overstuffed sofa, drowning in the white cushions that made me feel like Aphrodite lounging on a cloud…and he perched neatly on a rosewood victorian chair with upholstery embroidered with fat, green leaves.  I'd picked it up at a flea market in Reno, once upon a blue moon. 

                When Eddie had handed me a box like this, once, so very similar in design…I remembered a feeling or trepidation and fear at knowing that what was inside would start a new chapter in my life. I would dive into a strange new world and never again be able to experience my old one. But the box Grissom held gave me none of the trembling bits of fear and doubt I'd expected…but washed me over with waves of warmth and comfort. 

                Cracking it open revealed a teardrop the color of rust, a soft, diluted amber that sat within the darker blue silk interior and did not move.  Nor did what lay inside the chunk of substance…a Ladybug, wings pressed together in the protective shell of it's curving back. And although Lindsey stared in confusion at the gift, when I removed it from the box and dangled it from the silver chain on which it was hooked…I understood the meaning, and my smile lit up the room. 

                "The first bug I ever found…and I gave it to you, in a specimen jar."

                "It was the first year your Mommy worked with me." Grissom was kind enough to explain this to my daughter, who smiled as she let her fingers move over the piece of amber as well, as if she were memorizing every detail of the bug inside. 

                "A ladybug…like Mommy, who's a lady." 

                Grissom smiled at that, and I smiled with him, going into the kitchen for drinks as Lindsey thanked him profusely for her gifts and headed off to my room. I'd promised her that she could watch _The Wizard Of Oz_ until she fell asleep, if she let Mommy and Grissom enjoy their coffee in the living room.  We didn't have coffee, but true to her word she let us enjoy what we _did_ have…quality time, and egg nog with a splash of Captain Morgan's. 

                "You know, Grissom…I love my job. Solving puzzles laid down for me by everyday people, going about their everyday lives without realizing that every skin cell they shed leads me closer to the truth."

                He nodded, and leaned back in his chair to stare absently at my tree. Blue ribbons and pearl strands dangled from the evergreen branches, tinsel dripping lazily over the entirety. When one lets a child go loose with tinsel, one gets what one asks for.  But I couldn't have asked for a nicer tree, with the white lights reflecting off of frosted glass bulbs and popcorn garlands Lindsey had painstakingly made at school.  As Grissom studied my tree, I reached beneath the sofa cushion and withdrew the one gift I hadn't inserted beneath the lush green branches.  A box wrapped in caterpillar paper, leftover from my nephew's sixth birthday party.  Much more fitting than paper that involved Santa and his elves wrapping gifts in the toy shop.

                I knew he hadn't expected a gift any more than I had asked for one, but the damage was done, and gently but persistantly I pushed the package into his hands. 

                "Open it." And I watched steadily as he worked the paper off, smiling at the furry creatures that adorned the paper, and taking care to pry the cover off the four-sided box. It was flat, but left plenty of room for what I'd placed inside, nestled among a bed of fluffy white cotton. A CD, written upon with thin tipped marker, black ink forming words in neat handwriting. 

                "It's Coming On Christmas."

                "The song by Joni Mitchell is the first track…and the last track is the last song I ever danced to…the day I met you." I'd remembered that song every day of my life since then, thought of it and played it in my mind whenever I walked the catacombs of the Las Vegas Crime Lab.  When Gil Grissom made his first appearance in my life, I'd made my last appearance inside a dingy, smoke-filled club…at least, to dance. Crime scene investigating took me everywhere…where many men have never dared to go before.

                As we lapsed into silence, and the clock mounted on the wall began to announce the hour of twelve, Grissom shifted and rose, readying himself to leave.  I had to let him…we both had to work the next night, and he needed his time to sleep.  To fill out Advanced level crosswords and sip mocha latte…although the latter he would never have admitted, not even to me.

                "Grissom…wait." The door hung open, the chill of the night air biting at us both, although he wore a jacket and I a quarter-sleeve lace blouse, the color of the winter moon.  He paused, and followed my gaze up to the doorframe, where a sprig of mistletoe clung tightly to the woodwork.  Leaves as green as I had once been on my first day of investigating, and berries as red as the blood shed at many of the scenes we came across. As the meaning of those leaves and berries sunk in, Grissom brought his hand up to clasp mine, in a hearty handshake. 

                "Good night, Catherine." The kiss was a sweeter kiss than I had ever known, the warmth of his lips enveloping me in such a comforting way that even a fleece jacket couldn't duplicate. It lasted for hours, it lasted for days…it lasted for just a few moments, my hand snaking up to wrap around his neck and feel his pulse beating, strong, and seemingly in tandem with my own.

                "Good night, Gil." And he was gone, a sudden gust of wind sweeping him out the door and to his Tahoe…and I watched from the window as he started the vehicle and proceeded down the empty street. My fingers met my lips, and I sunk into the window seat, smiling at the sky with a satisfied expression, and a peaceful mind. 

                I had my independence, and my towering tree, and my oak baseboards…

                And as it came on Christmas, I had Gil Grissom's love.

 -Fin

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'"  [VGC1]What college does she go to?


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